Lately, trade wars seem to outweigh military conflicts by their scale and significance. What is good about trade conflicts is that losses are mostly financial. No one is called up in some special trade action forces or sent to the front line. Some countries, perhaps, would like to join such trade operations but lack economic and financial resources. While some countries stay aside, the global powers are getting braced for the final fight.
The United States is getting ready to resist at least two opponents: China and the European Union. The sides have already imposed tariffs on various goods against each other and plan to take more decisive measures. German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned US President Donald Trump that the country is ready for any measures after Trump’s threats to introduce large tariffs on auto imports from the EU. European cars are quite a hard blow: it is not about simple steel and aluminum, it is about the brand now. The American brands are under threat now too: such well-known branded products as bourbon, jeans, and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Besides, the European Commission in March released its plans for a "digital tax" that aims at transnational corporations such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google that were criticized all over Europe because of a revenue shift.
